It's about caring, discipline and connecting

June 21, 2006

It isn't possible to separate discipline problems in schools from the soaring dropout rate. Nor is it possible to separate the high number of dropouts and the high incidence of crime. Young people make choices -- including the choices of how to behave and whether to go to school -- that can alter their lives forever. The result can be a sense of hopelessness, as well as overwhelming worry and grief on the part of adults who care about them. We are thinking of Alice Walker, a South Bend woman who is raising her 9-year-old nephew. The child has been subjected to repeated discipline at school. At the news that he had been given another after-school detention, Walker's frustration boiled over: "What am I going to do? I don't think I can take this. ... I just don't know what to do." Walker was speaking to Tribune staff writer Michael Wanbaugh for a June 5 story on school discipline. Her very real desperation ought to be tempered by two facts: 1)Adults who care can make a difference. 2)And, most decisions by children, including some really bad decisions, are not irrevocable. A hometown hero in South Bend this spring exemplifies fact No. 2. Tyree Jones quit high school when he was a 15-year-old freshmen. The odds of him turning that bad decision around weren't so good. But Jones, who now is 19, graduated from Riley High School this spring and has plans for higher education. It took a year of using and selling marijuana, a misdemeanor arrest and a trip to the Frederick Juvenile Justice Center to get Jones back to school. He was ordered to Riley as part of his probation. Which is when fact No. 1 was exemplified. Riley English teacher Marcia Kovas and former Riley counselor Sherry Bolden-Simpson were caring adults who gave Jones guidance, support and encouragement. They helped him to understand that he could control his own future. The bad decisions he had made didn't have to define his life. Speaking of caring adults, one who got away is Jay McGee. He was principal of Hamilton Alternative School in South Bend until Hamilton was closed in a 2002 budget cut. When Hamilton closed, a lot of kids who don't do well in traditional high school didn't have a place to go. McGee's place now is Burris Laboratory School in Muncie, where he's the principal. He told reporter Wanbaugh that discipline problems often have more to do with stress in a child's life than with school itself. And, "(kids) who are having discipline problems are at risk of dropping out." They get behind to the point that they don't understand the school work -- so they act up, get suspended and then don't have to do the work. With a pattern like that, it isn't long before they aren't in school at all. McGee's work at Hamilton involved developing plans and programs to break this cycle. It might be a stretch to say that being a dropout leads to criminal activity. But we don't think it would be a stretch at all to say that most people who burglarize homes for a living aren't high school graduates. There never are easy answers to complicated societal problems. But it is at least a beginning to acknowledge that there is a connection between education, self-confidence and personal success. Courageous young people like Tyree Jones, who aren't afraid to trust caring adults, can make the connection. So can adults who reach for the potential in under-achieving children -- adults who aren't blinded by preconceptions and negative expectations. Look at Tyree Jones. Look at Marcia Kovas and Sherry Bolden-Simpson. There is hope. It can be done.